The Best Notebooks

Published October 2, 2018

Your guide

Kevin Purdy

If you take notes, plan tasks, keep reminders, or doodle ideas by hand, a notebook with good paper in the perfect size is a small investment in a lot of great moments. After interviewing experts, having 70 Wirecutter staffers test notebooks head-to-head, and using notebooks for weeks, we have picks in a number of sizes and styles—any of which will provide an appreciably better writing experience than what you can get from a big-box drugstore, or even a Moleskine.

Why you should trust us

Photo: Rozette Rago

In tandem with guides to the best pen and mechanical pencils, I spent more than 100 hours researching all things stationery. I’ve carried around notebooks of every size in my pockets and my backpacks for a few months. I’ve read detailed reviews of every notable notebook that’s widely available to buyers, whether online or through art supply, stationery, or office supply stores.

I have a lot of personal experience with notebooks. I was a newspaper reporter and freelancer for nearly a decade, carrying a reporter’s pad most places I went. As a Wirecutter writer, I’ve written dozens of guides to seemingly common objects that are actually deep reservoirs for taste and obsession. Most relevant among my Wirecutter work, I edited a larger guide to home-office supplies.

Buying Options

Who it’s for: Someone who wants to carry a small notebook with them everywhere, and wants good paper and durability, or who wants to use multiple notebooks for different purposes and projects.

Why it’s great: The Field Notes Memo Book is not the cheapest pocket notebook you can buy, nor is it filled with the most luxuriously smooth paper available, but it is the best widely available way to treat yourself to a better writing experience. Our testing and surveys showed that it is the best-performing notebook that actually fits in a pocket without feeling like a second wallet. It feathered and smudged the least with pens in our testing, and many testers like the light-brown ruling and cover details. Its 48 pages provide just enough to cover a trip, an assignment, or other use without making you feel like you wasted paper if you don’t completely fill it. Field Notes also offers ruled, graph, blank, or (in editions like Pitch Black) dot grid paper, and a wider variety of stylish editions than most notebooks offer.

Notebooks sold as pocket-size (generally A5 or B7 sizes) don’t always actually fit well in a pants pocket. Whether due to a stiff binding, inflexible cover, or the number of sheets inside, some notebooks are less friendly to bending, curving, or occasionally being sat upon than others. At 48 pages and with rounded corners, the Field Notes comfortably fits flat in many men’s pants, shirt, or jacket pockets. Women’s pants, notoriously unforgiving of anything that would be nice to put away, can possibly fit this notebook in a back pocket, though it will stick up and may not be comfortable (“less comfortable than my wallet and more comfortable than my phone,” wrote one tester who wears women’s jeans). A male tester who usually pockets notebooks in the front of their jeans noted it was a close call between Field Notes and a Clairefontaine notebook (our runner-up pick), but the Clairefontaine “is thicker than the Field Notes, which makes it ‘springy’ (it doesn’t lay open as easily), and would not be as comfortable in a pocket.”

We like Black n’ Red’s useful features like perforated pages and a bookmark—but its paper can be a bit smudgy. Photo: Kevin Purdy

Field Notes paper smudges with only the wettest of inks, and even then dries quickly. Photo: Kevin Purdy

Rhodia’s paper is quicker-drying than most, but not quite as fast as Field Notes’s. Photo: Kevin Purdy

We like Black n’ Red’s useful features like perforated pages and a bookmark—but its paper can be a bit smudgy. Photo: Kevin Purdy

The National Brand steno pad is faster-drying and has less smudging than other steno pads, which is important if you’re writing as quickly as possible. Photo: Kevin Purdy

Field Notes paper smudges with only the wettest of inks, and even then dries quickly. Photo: Kevin Purdy

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The paper in the Field Notes Memo Book (60-pound text in bright white) was rated the best for smudging and feathering by Wirecutter testers compared with other notebooks’, especially when using a heavier-lined pen, like the Uni-ball Signo 307. Over email, Brad Dowdy from The Pen Addict and Elizabeth Price of No Pen Intended recommended Field Notes notebooks for everyday use (meaning non-fountain-pen writing). “For general purposes my vote goes to Field Notes,” said Price. “I think Write Notepads make the best (pocket notebooks), then probably Field Notes, and then probably everything else,” said Dowdy.

“I am not a neat writer, but I get the best results with the Field Notes! Page just seems to grip and hold the ink better,” wrote one Wirecutter tester. The smudge resistance and lack of feathering showed on this writer’s own test notebooks, and on many notebooks turned in by testers.

A number of testers noted that the 3½-by-5½-inch Field Notes lays flatter when open than other notebooks, not just in the center of its binding, but at the early and late pages where other books like the Clairefontaine or glue-bound Rhodia notebooks can bend upward and be hard to write on. It was also easier to fold the cover back on itself so you can write on the notebook one-handed.

The light-brown, almost khaki-like ink used for the Memo Book’s ¼-inch ruling is unique to these notebooks. It’s lower contrast than a dark blue or black line, which lets your notes stand out more on the page, and is easier to read later, where heavy ruling lines can sometimes make your notes seem cluttered and hard to read. We think the brown ruling works well with a variety of inks, though especially with the common blue and black.

Another serendipitous quality of the Field Notes Memo Book is its 48-page length. Besides making the notebook thinner than our runner-up notebook, that many pages feels like the right amount for covering a three-day conference, a week-long vacation, planning a novel, scribbling a few weeks’ worth of grocery or to-do lists, or just jotting down a number of random thoughts. Our runner-up has twice as many pages, making each page about 4.5¢, versus 6.9¢ for Field Notes. But a 96-page notebook is a lot to fill, and some people may not want to use the same notebook for their grocery lists as for their project planning.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Some testers thought that the three-staple binding on a Field Notes Memo Book would not survive wear and tear in their pockets or a frequently used bag. I’ve managed to set one Field Notes cover staple loose through regular backpack-pocket-grabbing, but I’m uncertain that a similar fate would not have befallen a glue or thread-bound notebook, either.

Field Notes paper is a notable upgrade from the notebooks you bought for school, or most memo or legal pads you might use, but it’s not the best paper in all respects. More Wirecutter testers gave a higher score to the Clairefontaine pocket notebook for the feel of the paper under their pen, and having less “ghosting” (pen marks showing through prominently on the back sides of pages).

We think Field Notes’s size, smudge performance, pocket-friendly design, and wider availability—both online and at many book, office, and art stores—make it a notebook that more people should try.

Buying Options

If Field Notes are practical, smaller, USA-made notebooks that work in more situations, the Clairefontaine Life Unplugged Basics (pocket) is a more fanciful, substantial, French notebook that provides a more luxurious paper feel, at the cost of some smudging and feathering, especially with heavier-inking pens. If you’re okay with a bigger, stiffer pocket notebook, or simply want some of the best paper you can put your pen or pencil to, you should buy a couple of these notebooks to try them. Left-handed folks, however, should either use our nearly smudge-free pen pick, the Uni-ball Jetstream, with these notebooks, or use the Field Notes.

The Clairefontaine notebooks have thick, luxurious paper—but it’s stiff in your pocket, and more prone to smudging. Photo: Rozette Rago

The biggest concern with the Clairefontaine in testing was its size and stiffness. The weight of its 96 pages, stapled together, make the notebook resistant to laying flat, especially on the front and back pages. Its cover is also stiffly stapled to the pages, such that folding the cover over for one-handed writing requires some hand strength, and may result in some slightly torn pages. Depending on your pants, the notebook can be uncomfortably rigid and hard to remove from a pocket.

Size: 3½ by 5½ inches, 96 pagesRuling options: ruled

Medium-size pick: Rhodia ColoR

Photo: Rozette Rago

Our pick

Buying Options

Who it’s for: There’s no standard size, definition, or use case for a “medium”-size notebook. Some people might keep one in their backpack and use it as a planner, others may keep it flat on their desk, and others may use it handheld. However you use it, and whatever pen you put to it, Rhodia’s ColoR pads in A5 size are the best medium notebook for a great writing experience.

Why it’s great: The paper is softer, smoother-writing, and more ink-friendly than anything else we tested in this size; the fold-over cover makes it better to use than spiral-bound notebooks on a desk; each page is perforated; and having your choice of eight colors, as well as blank or graph or ruled paper is not common in standard notebooks. You can often find Rhodia notebooks in nicer art supply, craft, and bookstores, as well as online—though not always in the same array of colors available at JetPens.

The writers at Gourmet Pens, The Well-Appointed Desk, and The Pen Addict sing the praises of this pad, and there are many more glowing reviews of similarly sized and designed Rhodia pads. As with many other super-premium smooth papers, this Rhodia paper doesn’t dry as quickly as some paper (like Field Notes paper), but it’s still usable for most right-handers, and it dries quicker than Clairefontaine paper, the runner-up in this category. Though the pad works perfectly well if you fold your written pages back over the top, it’s easier to remove perforated pages as you complete them.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: At 12.5¢ per sheet, and with no easy way to use the back side of each sheet, buying a Rhodia ColoR pad—or a DotPad, or a graph-ruled Ice Pad, or a wirebound version—is a $7 investment in having a not-too-big, not-too-small notepad on hand at your desk or in your work bag. To spend a bit less, and still get good paper with a different form, consider our runner-up, the Clairefontaine medium.

Buying Options

Clairefontaine’s Basics Life Unplugged notebooks, in their 5¾-by-8¼-inch size, are the same notebook as their pocket-size version, just larger. They have the same thick, smooth paper that doesn’t dry as fast, but glides your pen around the page easily. Their cover is the same nondescript leatherette-ish paper, the binding is two thick staples, and there are again 96 pages of paper inside. If there’s a difference, it’s that the larger size makes it easier to lay this notebook flat or bend the cover back around the notebook.

You should buy this notebook instead of our top Rhodia pick if you prefer a journal-style notebook that opens on its side, or if you’re working on a project that requires keeping all of your notes together in one volume, versus ripping off pages as you go. Not that you can’t buy both—though, as with their pocket sizes, these Clairefontaine notebooks are harder to come by, both online and off.

Size: 5¾ by 8¼ inches, 96 pagesRuling options: ruled

Full-size pick: Black n’ Red Wirebound Notebook

Photo: Rozette Rago

Our pick

Buying Options

Who it’s for: If you prefer to write in a notebook with US letter-size paper (8½ by 11 inches), the Black n’ Red Wirebound Notebook has smooth-writing paper with minimal feathering and bleed-through, a double-spiral binding for frictionless page-turning, perforated pages and, most notably, easy availability online and in office supply stores. This is one of the rare sizes where a higher-quality, American-made notebook is available to you, and you should take advantage of it.

Why it’s great: We recommend the Black n’ Red notebook in our guide to school supplies and collection of home-office gear. After using Black n’ Red notebooks for two years, and sharing them with my wife, it’s hard to imagine scaling back to a just-paper notebook like a Mead for anything but the most basic of notes and assignments. The tough cover helped the Black n’ Red survive the stair-toss and water-dunk tests. The elastic band keeps the notebook from flopping open when you’re not using it, or can bookmark your last inside point.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: If you write left-handed, or use gel or heavier ink pens, the Black n’ Red is more likely to smudge than our other notebook picks. It’s not prominent with most ballpoint or fine-tip pens, but it’s notable. Every Black n’ Red page is perforated, but you’ll end up tearing a few pages from the rings by accident; it’s not hard to fix. The polyvinyl cover can be bent into deep creases if subjected to heavy or shifting objects, but it’s rare; this notebook is also available in a hardbound version if that’s a likely problem.

Buying Options

Who it’s for: If you are an actual news reporter, scrambling from one interview to the next, then flipping through a day’s worth of notes on deadline, you shouldn’t pay as much as Field Notes wants for its Front Page pad. If, however, you’re simply interested in a notebook this size for one-handed note-taking, fitting in a pocket or narrow bag, and stashing receipts or business cards inside the cover, the Front Page is a wonderful semi-splurge—it’s less expensive per sheet than most of the other notebooks we tested, including Field Notes’s own Memo Book, and you can easily reuse the back side of every page.

Why it’s great: The paper inside a Front Page is similar to that of our top pick Memo Book, but at 70 pounds, slightly more absorbent. Using even the wettest, inkiest pen we tested in our guide to pens, the Uni-ball Vision Elite, we had a hard time creating a smudge, feathering, or bleed-through with this notebook. The spiral-ring binding and thicker paper make page turning much less of a page-sticking nuisance than with other reporter’s notepads we tested. The overlapping cover keeps the double-ring spirals from catching or getting warped in your pocket or bag. And the pocket on the back cover, though open on one side, can serve as a convenient spot for any scrap you need to hold onto until you get back to your bag or your room.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: The cover material will definitely get frayed, bent, and possibly torn as you tote this pad around in a men’s shirt or jacket pocket or in a clutch, or stuffed in a messenger bag. The partially enclosed back pocket can lure you into thinking it’s a totally enclosed and safe pocket, but cards or notes fall out at certain angles. You won’t find the Front Page at most stores, so you have to stock up at Amazon or Field Notes directly.

Buying Options

If you are going to fill up a lot of pages quickly in a handheld notebook, like an actual reporter, and your employer isn’t buying your notebooks for you, your options for easily available notebooks come down to Tops, Portage, and some notebooks at your office-supply store that are similar to a reporter’s notebook, but not quite the right size. We liked the Tops Reporter’s Notebook more than the Portage.

The Tops notebook is not as good as the Field Notes Front Page at anything—but at around 5¢ a page, it’s roughly half the price per sheet, which matters when you’re burning through these notebooks extremely quickly. Compared with the Portage, its pages turned over with less sticking and resistance, and its paper allowed less smudging. When you’re writing notes with one hand quickly in a tight space, and turning over pages to capture the last half of a quote, those factors matter more than the thicker back cover and slightly less scratchy feel of the Portage.

Buying Options

Who it’s for: Steno books, like reporter’s pads, are a tool of a diminished trade. But the two-column, top-spiral-bound books themselves are quite useful for taking notes during a call, making to-do lists, and writing a lot of text without giving up much desk space. National Brand’s Steno Notes provided the best paper experience of the four steno pads we tested.

Why it’s great: National Brand’s paper allowed for faster writing—without concerns about smudging—than the Tops or Ampad Gold Fibre pads we tested along with the National Brand and Field Notes pads. Flipping pages over the top of the wire binding, even in a hurry, felt more consistent and easy with the National Brand pad, without any signs of tearing, even at the left and right edges of the paper. The green “Eye-ease” paper doesn’t immediately strike a newcomer as useful, until you fill a couple of pages with notes and notice how it’s like the night-light setting on your phone—staring intensely at dark letters on bright-white paper for long periods.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: National Brand loses points when it comes to its back cover, which is thinner than that of the other two pads, but on most desks and laps, that won’t be much of a concern. These pads also are not in constant, regular stock on Amazon, so you might check a local store to see if it carries them.

Buying Options

Field Notes makes a steno pad, The Steno, that, at 12¢ a sheet, $10 a book, is not meant to be used for sheet-flipping stenography. As the company itself notes, it’s a better fit for keeping on your desk or in your bag, using the two columns to plan out a day, take messages, or otherwise make full use of a luxurious paper bound with efficient double-wire rings.

When it comes to writing, Field Notes’s The Steno bested the other three steno pads we tested at feel, smudge prevention, and page turning. Its backboard was the thickest and sturdiest, and both covers are jam-packed with arcana about stenography, abbreviations, commonly and uncommonly misspelled words, hobo symbols, towns with great names, tic-tac-toe tips, and, somehow, a half-dozen other things. It also has centimeter and inch rulers on the sides.

The Steno is really an eccentric medium-size notebook. It’s for people who like spiral-bound notebooks and could find interesting things to do with a page divided vertically in two. Using it for nearly anything is far more fun than using a cheap drugstore notebook.

Size: 6 by 9 inches, 80 pagesRuling options: Gregg ruled

How we picked

Photo: Rozette Rago

Unlike our guides to pens and mechanical pencils, we ventured a bit further out into the realm of pricier notebooks (up to $15 each) when researching and testing for this guide. If you just need paper to write on, use any paper you can find. The notebooks tested and picked for this guide are intended to be pleasant to write upon, nice to look at, durable in a pocket, and worth the price per sheet for your plans, tasks, thoughts, lists, and reminders. They are, however, notebooks that are generally easy to find in-stock, and to buy online or in office or art stores. We tried to find the point at which paying more for brand names (mostly European) didn’t make for a notably better writing experience for the average pen or pencil wielder.

Similar to our pen and pencil guides, we consulted with and relied upon the work of experienced bloggers who review pens, pencils, and stationery. These people care far more about the performance of paper, against all sorts of writing implements, than most anybody. They also have a wide range of papers to compare notebooks with, both in their heads and in the permalinked archives of their blogs.

In particular, we traded emails with two bloggers to inquire after their favorite notebooks:

Brad Dowdy, The Pen Addict, a pen blogger since 2007 and often linked and cited by other stationery bloggers. Dowdy has written more than a thousand reviews of pen- and paper-related items and, most relevantly, is a co-founder of Nock Co., which makes notebooks and stationery bags. Dowdy was notably gracious in rating other manufacturers’ notebook paper. He tweets at @dowdyism.

Elizabeth Price of No Pen Intended has written hundreds of reviews on pens and notebooks, and particularly appreciates paper that can stand up to a fountain pen. She is a left-handed artist, and tweets as @NoPenIntended.

We sorted through the favorites of experts and coworkers, searched deep into Amazon and JetPens, and looked at everything available at our local office- and art-supply stores. Sorting and filtering for price, availability, recommendations, and sizes and rulings that most people find useful (grid paper has its place, but most prefer lined rulings), we narrowed a list of about 60 possible contenders down to 20 candidates to test.

How we tested

Our short list of notebooks looked good on … paper, but we wanted to see how these notebooks felt to people using them, side by side, with a variety of pens and pencils. To do this, we gave every Wirecutter employee attending a three-day company workshop a top pocket-notebook contender, the Field Notes Memo Book, along with a couple of each of our best pen and pencil candidates. We asked them to use the Memo Book to take notes during the first two days. On the third day, we corralled nearly 70 staffers into an intensive testing session, where they were given a few more pens and pencils, and then three more notebooks to write in, side by side with the Field Notes: a Clairefontaine Basics Life Unplugged (pocket), an Apica CD Notebook, and a Doane Paper Grid + Lines Utility Notebook.

Photo: Tim Barribeau

Each Wirecutter staffer who tested notebooks—over the three days or in the testing session—filled out a survey. We asked them to rate the notebooks, after using the same pen or pencil with each, on these criteria, in (rough) order of importance:

feel of the paper under pen or pencil

feathering of pen ink (bleeding from the edges of letters)

ghosting (pen ink visible on the other side of paper)

pen ink smudging

ease of carrying in a pocket or small bag

look and design

We also asked each testing participant to choose their One True Notebook, and offered them the text space to justify their choice. Wirecutter employees are hired for their pickiness, so we received a full complement of opinions and considerations on these notebooks.

We tested non-pocket-size notebooks in a similar style, just with far fewer people—a few Wirecutter staffers and some outside opinions from others who tried out a few models. We noted their feel with different pens, the feathering and smudging and ghosting, how the pages turned, how they fit in a pocket or bag, and how the cover, binding, stitching, and other elements felt and performed.

What about Moleskine?

Moleskine is the first name most people think of when they think of a “fancy” notebook. Most prominent among them are the Moleskine Cahier Journals. But after comparing the Moleskine with the other notebooks we tested, this seems like an all-too-common misfortune. The ink from anything that’s wider or wetter than a standard ballpoint spreads quickly into the page where the edges of your letters will feather, and shows through (ghosts) strongly on the other side. Users of fine-tipped gel or rollerball pens can pierce the pages with their tips. Standard Moleskine notebooks can work if you stick to one style of pen, but they cost more per page than most of our notebook picks—and you usually get to use only one side of each page because writing shows through on the other side so easily.

Most experts we read and consulted agree. “You shouldn’t be buying it,” writes No Pen Intended. “There are too many other good options on the market that don’t have the ink challenges Moleskine does,” Dowdy blogs at The Pen Addict. The challenges they are describing are ghosting, feathering, and an utter intolerance for any wet ink, be it gel or fountain. Some stationery blogs go out of their way to offer Moleskine alternatives. Moleskine has many varieties, some with higher-quality paper, like the Volant, but often at prices the same or above those of the notebooks we tested here.

The competition

Pocket notebooks we tested

Our nearly 70 Wirecutter testers compared four notebooks against each other: our two picks, the Field Notes Memo Book and Clairefontaine Basics Life Unplugged, the Doane Paper Grid + Lines Utility Notebook, and the Apica CD Notebook CD8. Numerous testers disliked the Grid + Lines ruling of the Doane—one tester said it was their favorite paper, “but those grid lines are a dealbreaker.” Otherwise, the Doane notebook rated second for ease of writing and smudge resistance, and third in everything else. The Apica notebook was last in every category except paper feel, and testers also didn’t like the sharp square corners, the discount-book-like binding, and, in one case, the curious inscription on the front: “Most advanced quality / Gives best writing features.”

Pocket notebooks we didn’t test

Many notebooks came to our attention, either through recommendation by experts or by digging through a few years of blog archives. A number of them were not reliably in stock on JetPens, or we didn’t expect anyone who prefers to buy local could find them at art, office, or stationery stores. Some were simply too big, too small, or in some other kind of format we didn’t think would work for most people. This is no judgment on their quality; indeed, if they ended up on our almost-short-list, it’s because they come recommended:

Muji offers many affordable notebooks, like the Passport Note, but we’ve found that, as with all Muji products, availability and stock vary from day to day and store to store.

Medium notebooks we tested

The Black n’ Red Ruled Hardcover Business Notebook is just like the full-size Black n’ Red we recommend, but in a medium-ish size. It costs nearly as much as the full-size Black n’ Red, though, making it more expensive per sheet than our Rhodia pick, which we think is a better paper and value. The Black n’ Red is more affordable in a two-pack from Amazon, though, so if you want a wire-bound medium-size notebook, it’s viable.

Clairefontaine’s 1951 Clothbound Notebook in A5 size is quite affordable and available in a number of colors, but like Clairefontaine’s other notebooks, the binding is quite thick and stiff, so that pages are pushing on you from the other side on certain pages. After a few writing sessions, we also found the spine had notable creases and some glue separation. The same limitations apply to another clothbound notebook we tested, the Fabriano Soft Touch, although it looks more modern, survived our bending a bit better, and costs more.

The Leuchtturm 1917 Jottbook costs twice as much per page as the Clairefontaine Basics Life Unplugged medium notebook we recommend. The paper quality is top-notch, but not so different from the Clairefontaine that any but the most picky fountain pen users will notice for the purpose of note-taking.

Reporter pads we tested

The pages of the Portage Professional Reporter’s Notebook let ink pool on top of their paper, especially at the end of characters or other pools or blobs in two-stroke characters, which led to notable smudges. Perhaps more important, pages didn’t always reliably turn over the top of the notepad smoothly or without small tears, which is a serious matter when a notepad is meant to be used for quickly scribbled notes.

Steno pads we tested

Ampad Gold Fibre notepads promise luxurious paper in their name, but their paper was also the smudgiest of all the steno pads we tested. The paper also didn’t feel as smooth under a good pen as you’d expect for such glossy, smudgy paper. The large, thin rings on the top of the pad also make it difficult to store this steno pad in a bag or purse without the rings getting bent or catching loose items, and make it hard to get the pad laying completely flat on a desk. The back cover was stiff, though, so it’s easier to hold in one hand than all but the Field Notes book.

Steno books from Tops had paper that didn’t feel as smooth under a pen as the National Brand steno’s, had the stickiest pages for turning over the top, smudged worse than the National pad, and had such thin covers that it was difficult to hold in hand.